Action and reaction
by Nelvhar
Summary: Tom leaves Iceburg and Franky for a week. A very bad thing happens. And as we all know, Franky tends to react violently when bad things happen to people he loves. Warnings inside.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer and Warnings:**

First and most important of all: One Piece and its characters do not belong to me, they belong to their creator, great Eiichiro Oda (praise him!). And I do not get any material profit by writing this.

Second: this fic contains adult themes (abuse, mentions of child abuse, violence, and bad words), so it has a big, well earned **M**. Not everything is gonna be darkness and angst here, mind it, but a great part of this story will be somewhat depressive and maybe hard to read. So if you are specially sensitive to these things, or if you just do not feel like reading this kind of fic right now, I fully respect it and I recommend you to read some other story.

Aaaaaand there is yaoi. If _that_ is a problem for you, kindly get you ass away from my fic, thank you very much.

Otherwise, sit and enjoy :)

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**1**

The thing was that the old hag who dried and sold the seaweed yarn did not send it. If you wanted that seaweed yarn you had to go to her islet near Santa Popla to get it personally. And Tom wanted it. He wanted that yarn because it was an exceptional one: the witch spun it while the Khaf'r seaweed was still wet and frail and, once it dried, it became virtually unbreakable yet extremely flexible. Such an exceptional material, together with the brilliant mind of Tom, resulted in an amazing variety of uses. Tom had been buying it for almost thirty years.

After all that time, the crone still did not consent in sending it to him. "An old witch's oddities" laughed Tom. "A pain in the ass" was how Franky translated it.

So Tom was going to be away for one week. He was leaving them by themselves for one week, and on one thing he was adamant: he did not want them working on the Umi Resha, not unsupervised.

"I trust you, my boys" his laughter silenced the protest both Franky and Iceburg had begun, "and I'm sure that you would do just fine without me. But I want you both to have a rest. Look" he sighed, "we are on schedule. These past months we all have worked hard, right? But they're nothing compared to what awaits us when I'm back. I don't want you to be out of breath prematurely, kids!" he finished as he had begun, with his trademark thunderous laughter. To that he added a pat on each of their backs, making both boys stumble.

The only task he asked them to do was to finish riveting some tubes and then to paint them with the special insulating paint.

They agreed to have the work done on the afternoon after Tom's departure. Early that morning Iceburg was going to the village to purchase several things he needed. He was quite unspecific about which those things might be, but Franky knew. Bakaburg was nursing _yet_ another critter, a small injured ugly thing with a big head that Kokoro claimed was an uncommon species of cormorant, with blue and green feathers. Iceburg needed worms to feed it until it was strong enough to fly again.

As Iceburg walked towards the door Franky thought he _needed _to tick him about the bug in order to feel self-fulfilled that morning. He won his self-fulfillment and also a wooden cup thrown right to his face.

"You better be at the workshop at midday, _Bakanky" _growled Iceburg through his teeth. "I want to finish those tubes today and if I don't find you there when I arrive I WILL DRAG YOU BY THE EAR TO WORK." With that he slammed the door, and he was gone.

"BakaBUUUUUUUUUURG!" Franky took the wooden cup, stormed to the door, opened it and threw the cup to the other boy's head. With more anger than aim, though, so the projectile broke against a wall several feet away its target, who kept walking as if nothing had happened.

Franky slammed the door close (how exactly it still resisted, after so many years of love and care, it was a mistery) and went back to swallow his breakfast in his naturally calmed manner: that is, as if he had been starved for several weeks.

"You should not mock him about the bird, Franky" Kokoro scolded him. The reprimand was toned down by the perennial smile and the lightly amused tone. "Much as he hides it, the boy has a tender heart. And there is nothing bad about it."

"Bah, a tender brwain you mean. He is not rwight in thg head, hwe adgopts awll thu blast bugs he finds; the twortoise, thg two newborn kittens, the rwat with thg missing tail, thwree ur fougr sprrows and a hedgehog, oh, and the_ damn ant with the broken leg_, and now thgt burd tha' stuffs itself with worms for lunch." He finished his bowl, so he no longer needed to talk and eat at the same time and with the same mouth. "Someone's gotta keep his head screwed on tight until Tom comes back. I clear off, Kokoro-san, I'm going for a spin." He stood up and left abruptly. Kokoro just cleaned the dishes with her impassive smile and a sigh that clearly meant _`honestly, this kid!´. _Yokozuma croaked, whatever that meant.

* * *

><p>As a remarkable event in the history of Tom's Workers, Franky arrived on due time. At midday he was waiting on the workshop. Truth was, he wanted to get rid of that stuff so he could devote the rest of the week to eat, sleep, taunt Iceburg and, above all, to his neglected Battle Frankies. And there he was… alone.<p>

Five minutes after midday he was impatiently stomping his foot to the floor.

Half an hour later, he was ready to bite Iceburg's head off as soon as he showed around.

One hour later he begun to work. Anger fueled him and he finished by himself, in two hours, what normally would have taken him five at least. For the rest of the day he held a spanner he planned to throw to Iceburg's head. But there was no sign of Iceburg returning when a grumpy, annoyed Franky decided to go to bed. His hand was stiff after eight hours angrily grabbing the spanner (something that had created certain operational difficulties at dinner time, leaving Franky just one free hand), so he gave the thing a rest.

Franky woke up long past midnight as he heard the noises indicating that Ic- _Baka_burg was finally back. He surreptitiously opened one eye and saw the lean, dark figure crossing the room. He blinked several times to clear up his vision still blurred by sleep. With his vision cleared he noticed that Iceburg walked weird, like limping or something.

So the fool had been on a brawl. `_Great. And its _me _who's aaaaaaalways told to control my temper and not to get myself in trouble´_. Heh. `_From now on, Bakaburg, I'm soooooo gonna shut your cakehole every time you give me a lecture about temper and troubles.´_For the time beign, though, Franky has something fun in mind. He closed his eye, pretending to be asleep. He was going to wait until the guy was warm and cozy in bed and then he would throw him the water of the jug they had in the room.

But Iceburg did not go to bed. He limped across the room and entered The Bathroom.

Not the bathroom. The Bathroom. It was one of the cool things of living with Tom. That old Gyojin really liked his long baths. True, the sight of Kokoro vigorously scrubbing his back, both half naked, happily (and out of tune) singing dirty songs could be defined as traumatizing; yet having that big indoors stone pool to wash off the sweat, dust, smoke and sometimes blood after the day's work was _great_.

The thing was that they had another smaller room for the latrine. Iceburg was clearly not going to take a squirt_. `So what's the jerk doing now?´ _Franky quietly stood up, walked towards the closed door and put an ear to it. He heard splashing, as if someone was throwing a water bucket over his body.

_`For fuck's sake, tell me the idiot is not really bathing at..._´ Franky looked at the clock in the wall `.._._two_ in the morning._ _So, it's official. He's definitely lost it_.´ True, days were warm, but temperature dropped drastically after sunset in that time of the year. The water in the pool, pleasantly fresh during the day, had to be chilled by now.

"The hell are you doing, Bakaburg?" asked Franky through the door.

There was a brief silence.

"Leave me alone, Franky."

The door dimmed the sound, but even considering that, it sounded... weird. More tired than annoyed, and there was something else, something off. Franky could not say what it was, but he knew it was there.

"But what are you _doing_ in there at _two in_-"

"Franky, leave me the hell _alone_ and go back to bed!" This time Iceburg shouted his answer and Franky could make out more things about his voice. The tiredness almost, but not entirely, subsided; anger, sadness and pain took its place. Anger was something usual when Iceburg talked to Franky; sadness and pain were not. And there was something else: he was hoarse. His shout had sounded hoarse and thick and cracked, as if he had screamed his lungs out before, or... or been crying for hours, or...

Franky was suddenly scared, his puzzled annoyance about Iceburg's weird acting fastly giving way to concern. He had a sinking feel in the pit of his stomach as he slowly realized that something very bad had happened. The splashing sound begun again. And Franky, the guy who more often than not acted before thinking and worried later, stood there still and silent like a statue, getting colder and colder in the middle of the night, not knowing what to do or what to say, while his mind, thick with confusion and with the mist of sleep, tried to get together the pieces of the puzzle.

_`OK, now, shitty stuff is going on here.´_ Iceburg had arrived more than twelve hours late, he was limping, he had cried or screamed or something, why? Just because of a stupid brawl? That did not make sense. A horrible accident with many injured and dead? Or... shit! Had he killed somebody? Or _what the fucking HELL_?

Franky was so intent on solving the question of what had happened to his friend that he failed to notice the new sound at first, and when he finally noticed it, almost a minute passed before he realized what it was.

Iceburg was crying. Histerically.

Franky felt a new cold all over his body, a sticky cold that had nothing to do with room temperature. Wide-eyed, mouth half agape, the boy listened for a moment to the most heartbreaking sound he had ever heard. It hurted. It literally hurted him inside.

Once, more or less nine years ago, he had cried just like that. So he knew that, right now, things were realy, _really_ screwed up.

Worried as he had been moments before, he had not wanted to break the door down, because it was him the one that would have to repair it. Now he sent everything to hell. Just in case he tried and turned the doorknob... and the door just opened. Iceburg had not locked it. Franky entered The Bathroom.

And a part of him wished he never had.

Iceburg did not notice that Franky had opened the door. He was sobbing, his sobs so frantic and hysterical that his whole body convulsed as if he was going to break. His eyes were shut tight and he was scrubbing himself as if he thought it was a good idea to rip his skin off. Water covered him to the waist. He was...

_Gods. _

The first thing Franky noticed was that he was all covered in black and purple blotches, and he came up with the silly thought that Iceburg had added tatooes to his whole body instead of just the two on his arms, and he had not liked how they looked and was trying to wash them away. Then he thought it was dirt. One second after he realized what they were: bruises, blue, black and purple, all over his body, on his neck, on his face. His eyes were swollen, his whole face in fact, as if he had been crying for hours. One side of his face, the left one, was evidently more swollen than the other, with darker, bigger bruises, the hair matted to the side of his face and head with half dried blood, the ear half hanging, as if someone had... tried to bite if off.

The more Franky looked with disbelief the bruises on his neck and arms, the more they resembled marks of fingers to him. Fingers covering the neck of his friend. On his mind, Franky could see the big hands grabbing his friend by the throat and choking him almost to death. Grabbing him by the arms hard enough to leave bruises almost as dark as his tatooes.

There were odd marks all over his neck and shoulders, half moon-shaped marks, and Franky realized they were bite marks. As Franky's eyes went down on Iceburg's body his heart sinked more and more. The bruises on his slender torso were bigger than the ones on his neck and arms. The kind of bruises left by a beating bad enough to break some ribs, at least. The purple and black was mixed with the red of bite marks and also scratches, chafed skin and dry blood. It was frightening to see how little of Iceburg's usual creamy skin tone was left. All his nails were broken and bloodied, and the little finger of the right hand was obviously broken.

"Ice-" Franky stopped; his lips moved to form the name, but his throat was so dry that no sound had emerged from it. He gulped, took a deep breath and begun again. "Iceburg..."

His friend froze, his sobbing stopped, his eyes opened up; his face wore a expression half panicked, half confused. For a heartbeat. Then it changed. Franky had never seen that expression on Iceburg's face: black rage and feral hatred contorted his features. He felt as if he had been struck and unconciously took a step back. Then Iceburg seized the bucket floating beside him and threw it to Franky with all his strenght. It missed by mere inches, the lad's moves beign obviously impaired by his injuries, and it crashed against the wall, turned to splinters.

"OUT!" he yelled like and animal, spitting blood, like Franky had never heard anyone yell before. But Franky had not moved to avoid the bucket and did not move now. He was in shock, his whole body was shaking, his knees weakened.

The explosive rage of his friend subsided as soon as it had emerged. His sobbing returned, softer this time, like... less frantic, but more sorrowful. His shoulders slumped and his hands hanged limp on the sides of his body, making the strong, proud young man look like just a lost, forsaken child. His head hanged down, eyes closed again.

"F-Franky... please... g-get out." The whisper, choked by sobs, seemed more deafenig than the former yell to Franky. And then he recovered from the shock, enough to be able to move, at least.

He did not want to get out. He wanted to enter the damn chilled water and hug his friend, and hold his broken body. But the question now was not what he wanted; the question now was what _Iceburg _wanted, and Iceburg had clearly asked him to get the fuck out. Twice. Legs heavy as stone columns, Franky retreated. Damn. It had been easier to carry those metal wheels, years ago, than to walk towards the door now. Franky walked like a zombie to his bed, and sat there, bracing his knees, his head between them. Waiting.

Fifteen minutes passed before Iceburg exited The Bathroom, but they seemed like fifteen years. Franky did not raise his head. He listened as his friend, slowly and painstakingly, kneeled down and entered the other bed beside his own, gasping with pain in the process.

Only once he was sure his friend was alredy in bed, Franky raised his head and eyed him warily. As he had guessed, Iceburg faced the wall, his back towards Franky. He was holding his pillow, his face buried on it. The covers did not hide the constant shivering of his body, nor the occasional shudders as he sobbed quietly from time to time. That was why he had buried his face on the pillow, to muffle the tears he was still not able to control. After a while, though, the pillow did not muffle them entirely anymore. Maybe Iceburg was too tired to care, or too weak to try. Be as it may, his tiny, gasping sobs slashed the silence of their shared room.

Franky succeeded that night at the hardest self-control task of his nineteen years of life.

He wanted to punch the wall every time he heard that soft, pitiful, heartbreaking sound. But he did not punch anything because he did not want to startle his friend.

He wanted to get away of that room, so he could escape those terrible sobs that beated his chest like a hammer. He wanted that badly. But damned he was if he was going to leave Iceburg there alone.

He wanted to take the place of that stupid, useless pillow, so his friend could cry on his neck, so he could rub his back and his hair and hold him, and use his arms to protect him against the world. But he knew that right now holding, or even just touching his friend, would do more harm than good.

He just stayed there, fists tightly closed, shining eyes fixed in the darkness, almost unblinking. Biting his lip until it bled, as a scream and something else, something black, grew slowly on his chest.

Iceburg cried himself to sleep, his soft sobs scarcer and scarcer until they ceased entirely, two hours before the dawn. Franky stayed awake the whole night.


	2. Chapter 2

**2**

_Iceburg had finished his shopping soon. Kokoro had explained him the location of the shop where insects and worms were sold. For people to eat them. YUCK. Of course he did not want the eel-worms for himself, he wanted them for Pterodactylus , because that was the only thing, Kokoro had explained him, that cormorant species ate. But he felt slightly embarrased as he exited the shop with a big jar of living eel-worms in his hands; as if everybody in the street was looking at him, pointing at him and saying to each other _`Behold! There he goes, the bug-eater´._ He fastly dismissed that silly idea and walked back home in his usual determined pace, deadpan faced._

_There was plenty of time until midday, and yet he hurried up. If he made Franky wait for even _**one** _minute the little bastard would hold it against him for _years_ (as if Bakanky was not late to work on a regular basis). But, most important of all, Pterodactylus would be starving (he had been able to find just two measly eel-worms, that beign the reason that he had decided to go buy a jar of them). Iceburg was afraid that, weakened as it was, the bird could die in his absence._

_But the roars of his stomach were increasingly high (he had skipped breakfast that morning just to hurry up) and he decided he would buy something on his way home, at a tavern right before the Bridge, at the outskirts of the city; he would eat as he walked the Bridge. The place was cheap and he liked their special dish; a steaming bowl of rice with chunks of any fish they had caught that day and a mysterious sweet-spicy sauce. Almost as good as Kokoro's curry with rice._

_The tavern was unusually crowded at that time of the day; people gathered there generally in the evenings, once finished the daily work. Well, actually the place was not _so_ crowded now; there were sev- no, eight people besides the owner, but as they were drunk, noisy and rowdy they seemed to be much more. Pirates by their looks, probably spending the money of a booty while their ship was under repairs. They had about them more guns and weapons than clothes, and half their clothes consisted on metalic rings and bracelets, gold, bronze, silver, iron and copper carelessly mixed; a constant clinking underlied their bellows and their drunken laughter. _

_Nothing new on Water 7, on the other side. Entering that inn and seing that scene, foreign people arriving from a calmer place in the world would probably turn around and run away, but the regular Water 7 citizen was quite used to that kind of thing. If you got scared at the sight of a bunch of pirates drinking, joking and enjoying themselves you should think on packing and choosing somewhere else to live, because they were, well, part of the scenery, just as typical as the Yagara Bulls. And Iceburg was a hard-working, toughened shipwright who belonged to a company of outcasts exiled from the city; his skin was even tougher than what was common there. So he entered the tavern without the least hesitation, playing no more attention to the fellows than to the beer and sauce stains in the wooden floor (classiness was not among the many advantages of the inn). `_You could build half the Umi Ressha with all the metal they carry around´_ was his only amused thought about them as he walked nonchalantly to the bar. _

_Because in spite of their menacing looks, every Water 7 citizen knew that pirates were relatively harmless. They were not specially quarrelsome; that is, no more than the isle inhabitants themselves. Brawls among drunken pirates and drunken locals were common, but not as much as brawls among the members of the different shipyards, drunk or not. Sober pirates and sober shipwrights argued sometimes upon a price, but it rarely came to something that the shipwrights, as fiery as they were skilled, could not take care of with their fists and guns. Pirates generally had a business-like attitude, anyway. They knew better than to treat those tough workers, or their fellow citizens, the way they usually treated people. If a crew outraged the members of a shipyard, the shipwrights could "forget" about properly securing a bolt here and there, and that crew would find out, in the middle of a storm, why it was not a good idea to anger the best shipwrights in the world. That "forgetting" was not a common practice though; it would be bad for business. It was like a sheathed dagger, like a holstered pistol. Both pirates and shipwrights knew it was there, and that was enough to earn the shipwrights, and Water 7 citizens, the pirate's grudging respect._

_But Iceburg soon realized that he had bumped into an uncommon group of real troublemakers. He had not even made it to the bar when he noticed a simple fact that changed the whole scene. Johnnyah, the bartender, a lad with skin as leather who, as stories went, had been himself a pirate when he was young, a guy that ended the fights on his tavern by the simple procedure of throwing through the window the two or three guys involved, well, now he looked like a frightened rabbit, his hands shaking as he refilled the jars of the guys. 'Mad dogs', was how they called them in Water 7; pirates who ignored the unwritten rule, the due respect to _**all** _the inhabitants of the island. Pirates who thought that was just another piece of land to pillage and terrify while their ship was repaired. People without morals._

_And Annyah, Johnnyah's daughter (and it was generally thought, the reason that the innkeeper had abandoned his pirate life), who was always swarming around the tables, was nowhere to be seen. Iceburgs heart missed a beat. She was 7 years old._

_Suddenly alarmed and enraged, Iceburg thought he had to go seek for help. Fifty metres ago there was a store where men of the Spiked Devilfish company were busy unloading sail rolls and heavy barrels of tar. One fast run and he would get them to the tavern; together they would take the rogues in hand. He tried to walk back towards the exit, but they did not let him reach it. He stayed calmed, glaring them coldly as they surrounded him. A look and a gesture of one of them to the bartender, and the man, who had known Iceburg for years, meekly went upstairs and closed himself into his room, head down and shoulders slumped. Iceburg noticed that his left ear was missing, blood running past his neck, and heard the frightened voice of the girl as her father joined her in the room where she was confined. That relieved Iceburg a bit, at least he knew the kid was fine. Confined and frightened, but fine. The squirrel faced pirate who guided Johnnyah upstairs locked the door and went downstairs to join his comrades._

_Iceburg thought they wanted to rob him (what other thing could they possibly want?), and maybe push him around a bit, and considering that they were eight, and armed, while he was unarmed and alone, he decided it was reasonable to give them the blast ten berries and be over with it. Not that he was a coward without pride who shunned a fight, but man, eight cutthroat looking pirates, armed to the teeth? For _**ten crappy berries**_? Damn, it was not even remotely worth it. Less with a honest man and his 7 year old daughter confined upstairs, depending on his cold blood to get a much needed help. He would be over with it, feign he was a meek, harmless fellow and come back four minutes later with an army of proud, angry fellow shipwrights. That scum would not have time to hurt Johnnyah or her daughter anymore. Iceburg was immensely glad that Franky was not there with him. Franky, with his bravado and his temper issues._

_But the pirates made it very clear that they had no interest in his ten pitiful coins, not even in the fun of robbing them to him. _

_Then the nightmare begun._

_He did not guess at first what their intentions were. Seeing his confusion the swines took great pleasure in explaining, briefly yet graphically, what they intended to do to him; his whole body felt cold and hot at the same time and the hunger roaring at his belly moments before was replaced by sickness and nausea, anger and disgust crawled in the pit of his stomach. A wave of pure terror clashed against him, and for a moment both his body and his mind were paralized. The world seemed to stop. Then they had reached to seize him. _

_Oh, he had put up the hell of a fight, and two of them were rolling on the floor before they realized that their seemingly easy prey was not such a thing. Iceburg was no weeping damsel. He had grown a tall, well-built young man, his body slender but toughened by strenuous work, his reflexes quick after so many years of quarreling, sometimes violently, with his fellow apprentice. He was definetely up for a fight; yet they were eight. And he was to realistic to think that he had a chance against them. But he was also a proud man, and valiant, and so he fought them back, bravely overcoming the dreadful, disheartening certainty that it was a lost battle._

_Iceburg had never been more scared in his whole life, a paralyzing fear bordering terror, yet he fought back fiercely; he screamed for help, but no one came. He screamed and roared, and yelled, in anger and pain and fear, until his voice broke; he bited them, he scratched them and the wooden floor when they pined him face down against it, desperately trying to claw his way away from them, from their hands, from their sticky touch; he scratched so hard that all his fingernails broke, bleeding and raw. He lost two. He kicked and beated with all his might. But the only thing he achieved was to amuse and infuriate his attackers. Finally, bleeding and panting, covered in sweat, and laughing, they submitted him and firmly pinned him down against the floor, mocking him and joking as he still thrashed about and struggled to no use._

_The eight took turns with him, one using him while the others cheered and laughed and held him down. And when the eighth had had his fun, they begun again. And again. _

_He did not beg them, did not plead with them. Not even once. He did not give them that satisfaction. But the tears, hard as he tried, he could not hold them. For that weakness, he hated himself almost as much as he hated the men harming him. He bited his lower lip, alredy broken and bleeding, until it bled even more, he closed his eyes so hard they hurted, and yet he was unable to choke the tears that scorched his face. It was like trying to order a bleeding wound not to bleed. His chest heaved as he shed tears of despair, tears of shame and humiliation, fury and impotence; and tears of pain._

_At his work he had cut bone deep, suffered burns with fire and oil, torn his skin and flesh. Broken bones, sprained ankles, sprained wrists, hands bleeding raw, splinters that had to be extracted one by one. He had often worked so long that all his muscles burned and stinged at first and then he got cramps all over his body; he just kept hammering and sawing up. Once he suffered trench foot and just kept working until one day Tom noticed his feet were filled with blisters and open sores; it had been really close to become gangrene. Tom had never been so furious with him before, partly because of the way Iceburg had hidden the gravity of his condition and partly because he was sure the boy was taking drugs (which was not the case); it was the only explanation, Tom thought, to the fact that Iceburg had kept working without collapsing. Bakanky just shook his head and called him idiot, though they both knew that the younger boy was cast in the same mold and would have done the very same thing._

_No, pain was not foreign to him; but this pain was a sharp, searing, piercing agony he had never suffered, not even imagined before. Hands that grabbed his arms, his neck, his thigs, his hips hard enough to leave them bruised; nails and teeth digging into his skin, into his flesh, with the sole purpose of marking his body with shame; the explossion of burning pangs as they callously twisted his limbs to turn him into a possition they fancied; he could stand all of it. But _**that**_**...** what they were doing to him, one by one, grunting and moaning with pleasure as he squirmed in agony, it was worst than anything he had gone through; because it was not just an agression to his body; it assaulted and ripped his very soul._

_At first Iceburg had wanted to slay them, to kill them all, to rip them to pieces with his bare hands. He had never wanted to kill anyone before, not really, but now a roaring rage unknown to him scorched his chest._

_Near the end all that he wanted was to go back home._

_Several times he thought they were going to kill him: specially when the squirrel faced one had grabbed him by his throat while he used him, and squeezed it so hard, and so long, that everything faded away, even that terrible pain __in _**that** place, _burning and pulsing inside with every frantic movement of the man over him. _

_Or the time the bigger one, laughing, grabbed a bottle (_'he's too tight yet to my taste, lads, I'm a big guy after all')_ and, for some moments, the pain had been so unbearable that Iceburg could not even breath. As the thug withdrew the bottle and the pain subsided just enough he had felt a new warm wetness among his shaking thighs; the thread of blood alredy trickling down his legs had become a bigger flow and mixed with his urine, hurt and shame mingling together. He had been too worried about making his lungs work again to care too much about the new, aggravated wounds or about the new humiliation. _

_When they pushed his head into a bucket of beer so long he lost conciousness, because he had spat in their face the drink they tried to force into his mouth _'to make a toast for their pliant little whore'.

_When one had decided to play with him with his revolver, one bullet on it, and pulled the trigger a few times until their captain slapped the guy on the head '_Enough, you fool, what if you _really_ shot him, you dumbass? I still wanna one more ride, or two, with him'

_But the time he most feared they would kill him was when he almost escaped. After six or seven hours of torture and humiliations, his body was badly beaten as it had never been, but despite all the suffering he had gone through his soul was not yet defeated. So when the one that was holding his right arm left it free for a while, Iceburg knew that it was his only chance to escape and, even knowing the dreadful consequences if he failed, he did not hesitate to take it. He reached to grab a bottle, half empty, neglectfully droped within his reach. He crashed it against the floor and, spurred on by all the hate and rage boiling in him, his teeth bared in a feral snarl, he plunged the broken glass in the throat of the man over him._

_The bastard's eyes opened, round as globes, and he weakly raised one hand to tug at the glass deeply stuck in his neck. He fell to the side, bleeding to death._

_In the chaos following some of his agressors let go of Iceburg to try and hold their agonizing friend, while others just softened their grip in surprise and disbelief. Adrenaline pumping through his veins, blood furiously throbbing on his head fueled Iceburg's exhausted body and he was able to crawl away from them, but before he could stand up he felt a hand gripping his hair. He was tossed to the floor, his head hitted the edge of a table and the cracking pain instantly faded away. Stunned, he fell near the still convulsing body of the bastard he had just slain. The others hurled themselves on him like possessed. The beating they had given him before, to submit him, or the playful, humiliating slaps that stung and left his skin red, were nothing compared to that frantic lynching. Iceburg had instinctively raised his weakened arms to protect his head; the rest of his body, naked and unprotected, was the target of their rage. They kicked him savagely. Stunned as he was he did not feel much pain at the time. He just noticed several cracks inside his body, and blood filling his throat and mouth._

_After that Iceburg did not fight them anymore. He was limp, feeble, a lifeless doll they no longer needed to hold down, to use him at their leisure. He had exhausted everything he had. Most of the time he was unconcious or semiconcious and was not really aware of what they did to him. Of one thing he was sure, though; he would not walk away alive from there. He had given up any hope about it. As soon as they grew tired of him they would kill him, cut his throat or shoot him in the head or, more probably, slit his belly open and let him slowly die. He had feared it before; now he did not fear it anymore, he just knew he was going to die there._

_Little Pterodactylus must have starved to death by now. He would never again try to figure out what Yokozuna meant with his croaks. He would never see Kokoro again, as ugly as she was gentle and caring to "her boys". He would never see Tom again, the master who had teached him so much, the closer thing to a father he had, he would never admire again, wide-eyed as a small child, his ridiculous strenght, his lively genious, his impressive skill. He would never see again those eyes full of understanding and wisdom._

_He would never see Bakanky again. His bizarrely styled blue hair, his cocky grin, his bad boy pose, his carefully concealed kindness, the grumpy, reticent conversations in which they both confided the other with their hopes and dreams, the stupid Battle Frankys that Iceburg loathed but also in a way admired, the way his frown softened and his bad boy pose relaxed when he slept, his damned exasperating stubborness about everything. His outrageous collection of Speedos, which Iceburg had been tempted to set on fire more than once. Bakanky. Franky..._

_The sun had set long ago when they were done with him. They had had fun enough for the day and decided he was too used and no longer entertaining. They did not kill him; they dumped him naked through the back door, to the alley, like trash, and tossed what was left of his ripped clothes to him. He had laid there for quite a while, bleeding and broken and unable to stand up, unable almost to breath; his lungs burned and his whole body shivered in pain with every intake of air._

_The fear of them coming back for him had overcome his weakness at last. Somehow Iceburg had been able to dress; with great effort and pain he did his best to push himself into his torn jeans and black T-shirt. It would have been easier, and faster, just walking home naked. After all the things he had gone through, what did it matter if someone saw him naked? But it mattered. It did. Maybe after all the horrors he had endured a small shame, though insignificant by comparison, would be just too much. Or maybe it was just that covering himself felt necessary after so many hours beign deprived of any power or control over his own body. Mayhaps doing back his clothes was the first small step to gather back some of the dignity those bastards had snatched him. Be as it may, Iceburg went through the hard, painful process of dressing, his heart in his mouth and choking in dry sobs everytime he imagined the voices coming from the inn were closer to the door. Then, after three attempts, he was able to stand up and half limped, half dragged himself back home._


End file.
